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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26875561">Enemy To Caretaker</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrokenKestral/pseuds/BrokenKestral'>BrokenKestral</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober2020 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sherlock (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends, Friendship, Gen, Kidnapping, Revenge, Whumptober 2020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 19:53:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,395</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26875561</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrokenKestral/pseuds/BrokenKestral</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Mycroft's relationship has never been friendly, but it has progressed to something other than enemies over the years. Inspired by Whumptober2020, not slash.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Whumptober2020 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1970584</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Enemy To Caretaker</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Fair warning, I’ve seen the first two seasons, the awful Christmas special I watched with my family, and that’s pretty much it. So this won’t be the full-fleshed characters, sorry! And will become AU about halfway through. I did try to keep it in character, however, but I’m only familiar with some of the later scenes because I do have some favorite Sherlock fanfiction. My interpretation leans on those, so if it’s OOC, my apologies, and please let me know.</p><p>I couldn’t really do this prompt for Sherlock and John, because they weren’t enemies at the beginning.</p><p> </p><p>“All the love for Mycroft. He is my favorite broken toy.”<br/>scifigrl47 on fanfiction.net</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <b>Whumptober2020: Prompt 7</b>
</p><p>
  <b>Support / Enemy to Caretaker</b>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>   The first time John Watson met Mycroft Holmes, it wasn’t a pleasant meeting. Well, perhaps Mycroft enjoyed it. He enjoyed the staging of the chair at the warehouse, the leaning on his cane, the threats, the notebook</span>
  <span>—intimidation is an art, after all. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   John left the meeting with a hearty dislike for the mysterious figure. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   And he wasn’t even slightly intimidated.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>   Their next meeting happened right after John killed a man, and the army doctor didn’t really have much room to judge. The mysterious, insulting figure who controlled street cameras and kept abandoned warehouses for first meetings was, apparently, his flatmate’s big brother. Who was the actual “big brother,”* according to Sherlock, for Britain and occasionally on loan to another country, and somehow John still wasn’t impressed.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Nor intimidated. But he had a bit more understanding. If being Sherlock’s flatmate led to running through the streets and killing a murderous cabby, he couldn’t imagine what being Sherlock’s big brother led to. Insanity of the worst kind, he supposed.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>   Mycroft popped in and out of John’s life at unexpected intervals after that. Mostly in annoying ways, like texting John for case updates after while having a root canal (and it was a case Sherlock said he wasn’t working), or showing up at the exploded flat, or threatening Sherlock. He became a fact of life, kind of like the government was, powerful and interfering and yet, as best as John could judge, he did have Sherlock’s best interests at heart. Like when he lied to Sherlock about Irene Adler’s death. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>    So not an enemy, then, John mused. Enemies don’t have your best interests at heart. But like an unpredictable back-up unit in the army; support that you almost wished you didn’t have, because it was difficult to rely on. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Still, he made life interesting. He gave Sherlock challenges, and if he treated John like Sherlock’s pet at times, Sherlock treated John like a personal servant. It must run in the family. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   John refused to wonder if that meant he himself was now insane. He’d been ignoring that question for most of his life. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>   Then Moriarty came into their lives, with threats, bombs, and innocent people bound up in them, and life was complicated enough John wished Mycroft would just </span>
  <em>
    <span>do</span>
  </em>
  <span> something. That’s what the government, the police, what soldiers were </span>
  <em>
    <span>for</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but this was far beyond John, and he feared, as Sherlock’s life fell apart, it was beyond Mycroft too. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The time had come for backup, and it wasn’t doing anything. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Sherlock fell. </span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>   Two years later it came out that the backup </span>
  <em>
    <span>hadn’t</span>
  </em>
  <span> failed,** and Sherlock wasn’t dead, and John punched him. Mycroft apparently knew all along, which John wanted to thank him for, because he saved Sherlock, and also to deck him for, because Mycroft hadn’t breathed a word. John decided Mycroft was reliable support for </span>
  <em>
    <span>keeping them alive</span>
  </em>
  <span>, but not reliable in any other sense, and he cut as many ties with the bothersome figure as was possible, while still being around Sherlock. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Only that didn’t work. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   John’s plans rarely worked around Sherlock, as Sherlock upset everything remotely resembling a plan that Sherlock didn’t agree to or improve upon (sometimes by asking “why” at the most embarrassing times). John had been </span>
  <em>
    <span>planning</span>
  </em>
  <span> on going to the pictures with Mary. Then Sherlock had interrupted, calling his plans borning and inviting him (not Mary, who had a cold anyway) to a more exciting evening of chasing down some men who were stealing London’s historical statues for reasons unknown, and now John was tied up and gagged in the back of a van, and Sherlock was insulting the driver. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   He was also telling the driver exactly where they were every time the driver turned, and John wasn’t that surprised when the passenger climbed into the back of the van and hit Sherlock over the head with a pistol butt. John rolled his eyes, doubting the passenger would stop with one, and sure enough, pain was headed his way. He rolled with it as best he could, but with a van wall behind him, that wasn’t much. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   He woke up in a warehouse. A dead-fish smelling warehouse, with so little lighting the figure sitting in the chair was nearly invisible. If John had remembered his first meeting with Mycroft, he might have admitted Mycroft had a bit better style. Or at least better lighting. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Only Sherlock was stirring a few meters from him, and when John tried to move his arms he found they’d been tied behind him around a pillar with zero give to the ropes, and he didn’t have the attention to spare. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   They had also been gagged with duct tape, which John counted a small mercy until he knew how long their patience held. His head was already aching, and there was blood in his ear. It tickled. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Remove the tape from the tall one,” said the figure in the chair in a slow, whispy male voice. A figure stepped out of the dark somewhere around Sherlock and ripped off his gag. “Now leave. I’ll pay you later.” Three dark figures headed for the door, closing it behind them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “What do you want?” Sherlock asked, studying the figure.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “That won’t do you much good, Mister Holmes. We’ve heard all about your ability to see. We thought it safest to take away as much of that sense as we could, without actually blindfolding you.” The man got up, very slowly, and John frowned. The doctor was not surprised to see the man reach for a cane, laying on his chair, and begin limping towards them with the steps of an arthritic man, possibly with a knee replacement. The man continued walking towards them. “There are, after all, things we do </span>
  <span>want</span>
  <span> you to see.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Sherlock smirked. “And what would that be?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Why, the death of your friend, of course.” Sherlock’s eyes flickered to John and back to the man, as fast as thought. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Why? For what purpose? Not for money, your shoes are Crown Northampton,*** and your suit is tailored. Not for violence, either, you’re a professor who taught evening classes for the past thirty years, though you’re recently retired.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “The past thirty-three, actually, and I retired four years ago, but I still give lectures occasionally.” He was near enough now John could make him out, an old, clean-shaven, pale man with stooped shoulders and very large glasses. The shadows in the warehouse left bags under his eyes, and in the dark he looked like a mad scientist from a cheap novel.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “But you still haven’t told me </span>
  <em>
    <span>why</span>
  </em>
  <span>,” Sherlock demanded, still staring at the man as if he knew enough he could stop this, he could put things to rest, and John was waiting with a pounding heart, because if Sherlock couldn’t then they were both dead.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Well, you were present at the death of a friend of mine,” the man explained, patting his pocket. He pulled out a knife, too large for a pocket knife, and he put it to John’s throat.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Stop!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “And why should I?” the man asked, looking over his glasses at Sherlock. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Because you still have too much to lose.” Sherlock’s voice grew fiercer, the words spilling after each other so fast John barely caught them. “You’ve a granddaughter not eight years old, a life you’re going back to, and you know, if you kill him, I will hunt you down. You’re in Chiswick, you take the underground, and that would be enough to find you. You will never get away with killing him.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Of course not,” the man said, smiling gently. “I have to kill both of you. But you’re the one who caught Dr. Frankland**** doing what we’d been paid to do our whole lives, in between teaching evening classes, and you’re the one who chased him into a minefield. So you are the one who gets to see your brother-in-arms die.” He turned back to John, smiling apologetically. “It will take a while, I’m afraid,” he added, beginning to draw the blade down. John could feel the metal slicing skin, but not deep, not a soldier’s quick kill. “I learned how to just nick the veins, so you bleed out slowly.” John stifled a groan; it didn’t hurt </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> much, but it wasn’t pleasant; just warmth beginning to flow down his neck.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “John!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “All right, Sherlock,” John gasped into his gag, though he felt the warmth spread when he spoke, and he shut up.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “There, that should do it.” The man stepped back, smiling as he wiped the knife on John’s jumper. John wished his feet were free enough to kick the cane from the man’s hand and watch him fall face-first on the smelly floor. But John’s legs were tied as well, and he was forced to watch the old man turn away. </span>
</p><p>
  
  <em>
    <span>He’d better not be heading for Sherlock</span>
  </em>
  <span>.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   But he wasn’t, he headed back to the chair, and sank into it, panting slightly. “Have you anything to say to your friend, Mister Holmes? I’d say it soon. It should take less than ten minutes to bleed out, and then, of course, it’s your turn. But I imagine the ten minutes will feel like an eternity for you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “John.” Sherlock’s tone held a question, a question that sounded like a statement, asking without words, </span>
  <em>
    <span>can you hold on?</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>   John didn’t reply, other than looking at Sherlock. The man was right, John could feel it. His fingers were already getting cold. Speaking didn’t help, and Sherlock seemed to read that, something John was thankful for. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “This won’t help. You’re a professor. A scientist. There is no logic in killing a man for the sake of a friend.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “And so you won’t want to kill me for killing your friend?” The man’s eyebrows rose. “Ah, I thought so. Can you feel it? The emptiness inside, where that warmth used to be? Oh, I have my family, and they’d be enough, but Bob and I, we were the only two to survive, of the ones who chased the ideas together without being bothered by ethical consequences. Science for science’s sake! And we got away with it, Mister Holmes, with more than you can imagine. But you can imagine what it was like to lose him, can’t you? Oh, the work remains, and the family, and I could have lived my life quite happily, once the papers informed me you were dead. But you came back, didn’t you?” For the first time, the man lost his smile. “You came back, you pretentious offspring of an entitled class, and that, I could not bear. And so, this meeting, arranged with a few of the men who use what I make. You know enough, you intelligent idiot, to know we’re far from Chiswick, and this will never, ever be traced back to me. And now, now I can be happy again.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   John could feel his eyelids growing heavy. He struggled to keep them open, focused on the man in the chair and not on the way his jumper was currently soaking, but it was hard, as hard as continuing living those first few months. He almost felt sorry for the mad old man. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   Sherlock opened his mouth—to tell John to keep his eyes open or to berate the old man, John would never know—and the man fell forward with the sound of a bullet going through a body. John wrenched against the ropes—was this a new threat?—only to see a special ops team pouring into the building, Sherlock yelling orders to get to John. Then hands were on his throat, pressing in, and suddenly the pressure on his shoulders gave way, and trying to keep his feet was impossible when they were numb, and he fell, like he’d wanted the man to fall earlier. Sherlock was there a moment later, ripping off his scarf, shoving the soldier out of the way, and talking nonstop. John was too hazy to catch the words. Besides, Sherlock always talked nonstop, unless he was doing something. John smiled at the thought and closed his eyes.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p>
  <span>   Sherlock informed him later that John opened them again several times after Sherlock slapped him, but John didn’t remember that part. Mary and Sherlock were both beside him in the hospital when he woke up, and they fussed over him far too much (in very different ways, Sherlock couldn’t fuss over someone normally if John’s life depended on it). He finally reminded them (“Doctor, remember?”) that he was quite overqualified to take care of himself, and sent them both away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   They only went as far as the waiting room, but it gave him some peace and quiet, and room to change. He’d just gingerly pulled a jumper (a new one Mary brought) over his head and away from his neck when someone in the doorway cleared his throat. Mycroft stood there, leaning on a cane.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “You are recovering, I trust.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Well enough.” John titled his head. “I understand we have you to thank for the timely rescue.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I’ve been made to understand it could have been a little more timely, but that’s in the past.” Mycroft sighed heavily, that sound John still found quite irritating. “I also understand you have a desire to punch me. I thought it best to give you the chance.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “In the hospital. While I’m still recovering.” John smiled. Mycroft...was Mycroft, and John would never like him as much as Sherlock, but Mycroft had come through when it counted. Every time, if you excluded the whole “hiding the truth” thing. And he’d offered—sort of—to let John punch him. While recovering.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “I am a genius.” John didn’t move, and Mycroft sniffed. “There’s someone else in here I need to visit—a matter of state—but I do hope you have a swift recovery.” He turned, in that elegant, languid way</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Thank you.” Mycroft stopped, turning to look back with the face John had come to understand meant he was serious.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   “Always, John. After all, to look after my brother means to look after his friends.” And with that, the man walked away, and John shook his head.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>   The Holmes brothers always did have to have the last word. With each other, with their enemies, and even with the ones they cared for as family. </span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>*I’m not sure if this is an Americanism or whether the expression is used in the UK as well, but as it comes from Orwell’s book, I thought it might. <br/>**This is where my knowledge runs out. Sorry! All of this is therefore AU (probably), since predicting TV storylines has never been my strong suit. <br/>***I know there’s lots of jokes about writers’ internet search history, but honestly “How much are expensive shoes in Britain” is not one I ever expected to use. And since Google was smart enough to give me prices for UK shoes sold in America, I went with an expensive brand rather than a price. <br/>****From “The Hounds of Baskerville” episode</p></blockquote></div></div>
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